A glimpse under the hood of a BTCC NGTC!

This post we will take a look at whats under the body work at the front of next generation touring car (NGTC) The following photo was taken during the build of Team Dynamics Honda Civic touring car. (published on https://twitter.com/ by @MattNealRacing ) So what is lurking under the hood of a NGTC racer?

The TOCA specified steel tubed front sub frame manufactured by GPR Motorsport (http://www.gpr-motorsport.com/ can be seen fitted to the front of the car wrapping around the cars Neil Brown engineering 300+bhp K20 engine (http://www.nbe.co.uk/) highlighted as number 1.

The cars front left hand Penske (http://www.penskeshocks.co.uk/) coil over damper can be seen laying horizontally connected the rocker, highlighted as 2 and 3 respectively.The pushrod which transfers the movement of the lower wishbone to the rocker and then to the coil over damper is highlighted as number 4.

The cars anti roll (or stabilizing bar) is not fitted in this photo but the two bearing blocks which it mounts into as it runs from the left to the right of the car are visible on top of the sub-frame highlighted as number 5. Different thicknesses of anti roll bar can be used to set the car up to different circuits.

The cars three hydraulic reservoirs can be seen in number 6, with one reservoirs for the front brake circuit, one reservoir for the rear circuit and one reservoir for the clutch circuit. The bracket for these reservoirs is shown as being cable tied to the sub frame, this is probably temporary as it doesn’t look as secure as would be expected and the reservoirs could rotate around the tube with the cars vibration.

The air induction and turbo system for the car is not fitted in this photo and the a white plastic shield is fitted over the air intake ports to prevent debris from accidentally falling into the engine, Number 8. The text “Neil Brown engineering” can be seen printed on this temporary shield.

The cars starter motor is visible in number 9 this is normally hidden from view by the car’s air induction system this is use to drive the engines fly-wheel to turn over the engine.

A heat exchange is shown in number 10 and the hose coming off to the left of the photo connects to the underside of the radiator which is not fitted in this photo.

The Xtrac (http://www.xtrac.com) sequential gearbox is shown as number 11 the shifter mechanism is not fitted in this photo and is normally located on the top side of the gearbox housing.

The coil over dampers horizontal location running from the front to the rear of the car may look slightly unusual as compared to the traditional McPherson strut suspension found in standard road cars and even to the coil over’s position of the NGTC rear suspension running left to right (as discussed in my previous blog) the following diagram and animation I have made should help to explain how the system works.

Feel free to leave any comments below or email me at btcctechnical@gmail.com. Also don’t forget to follow me on twitter: @btcc_technical so you don’t miss any new blog posts.

2 comments

Your site is really good and your technical understanding is better than any car blog I can recall (there are far too many hip drifter blogs written by people who only partially understand what they are talking about). Thanks for your contribution to the internet.

That being said, I must say that I’m really disappointed with the NGTC subframe approach. I understand the rationale — to standardize a part of the car that, due to inherent design compromises found in low-end production cars, had always created a huge cost point to make race ready, thereby making it cheaper to go racing, and to make the cars more closely competitive. But I feel that such an approach completely undermines the purpose of production based racing altogether.

The whole idea should be that you are pitting factory cars against one another and that they are all allowed a similar, relative degree of modification, which ultimately allows for the manufacturers to duke it out, thereby proving that their unique recipe is better than the other guy’s. If you eliminate the inherent design compromises and/ or strengths found in the road cars, you basically end up with a race to see which manufacturer can build the neatest looking obsolete unibody. That’s lame. I want to see mac struts vs. multi link. I want to see turbo vs. naturally aspirated. I want to see RWD vs. FWD, etc. But most importantly, I want to see each manufacturer attempt to highlight their own entry’s benefits as a road car by showing what can happen when pushed to the edge. By taking away all that makes the cars unique, for better or worse, you lose any association with the road cars and you might as well not use a unibody chassis at all.

Hello, thanks for the comment. I’m glad you enjoy the blog. Unfortunately I don’t make the rules only write about them.
A championship has to decide whether it wants to encourage close racing, which needs similar regulated technology on all the cars, or engineering innovation which can lead to a single team dominating and high costs.